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I turned back to the water, folding in my lips to keep the sound from falling out. The anguish. Then I tucked the picture inside my purse that was strapped across my torso.
“You should get your feet wet.”
“You should come with me.”
Reed glanced at the water, his brows gathering as he slid his thumb across his lower lip. “Maybe another time.”
His words from that first night at the lake coursed through me—when I’d invited him into the water, and he’d declined.
My voice lowered with sorrow as I echoed back, “Liar.”
I toed out of my boots anyway, dropped my purse to the sand, and sauntered forward, the cool water sloshing against my bare feet. Drawing them in. Drawing me away from Reed.
He stood still at the shoreline, watching me submerge, his black boots barely teasing the shallow tide. I turned to face him and walked backward, yelping when the tide grew wings and crashed against the backs of my thighs. A laugh fell out of me, and he laughed, too.
Fifteen feet away, we stared at each other as I allowed the ocean to suck me in while Reed’s adoring smile did everything it could to keep me standing upright. Seawater lapped at my hips, drenching the bottom of my dress. My toes curled into the spongy floor. I flapped my arms, splashing the air with droplets and twirling in circles as sunlight painted my body in vivid colors. Fuchsia, orange, and amber. His eyes reflected the same colors.
Shivering and soaked, I padded back to the shore, meeting him on dry land.
Reed reached for me the moment I was within arm’s length as a song played from a cobblestone patio draped in string lights. “Dance with me.”
I pretended it was our song. Composed just for us.
I let him hold me as he wrapped both arms around my waist and pulled me to his chest. We swayed lightly to acoustic guitar strings and the remnants of the setting sun while warmth settled in, eclipsing the ocean’s chill. I was at home again. Not in Illinois, but in Reed’s glittering galaxy.
A comet landing in the arms if its favorite star.
He sighed heavily, dropping his face to the crook of my neck, his stubble tickling my soft skin. His arms tightened. My heart ballooned. We danced, undulating side to side, in unsteady circles, with wet sand beneath our feet and salt on our skin. Tears and ocean mist.
“This was all I wanted tonight, Halley. Just this. Something we never got to experience.” His words were warm honey against my ear. “Everything between us was built upon respect and genuine connection, but it was only able to be harnessed in the physical sense. Behind closed doors. Kept in the shadows.” Reed slid a palm up and down my spine, his thumb grazing the zipper of my dress. “It killed me that you left, and we never got this. Not once.”
Public affection.
Transparent love, out in the open.
A fuck-you to the universe that we were right and they were wrong.
Age didn’t matter. Numbers meant nothing in the grand scheme of destiny.
“I still want this,” I murmured against the heather-gray cotton molded to his chest, the fabric tormenting me with masculine, familiar scents. “I’ll always want this.”
“I know.” He kissed the column of my neck. “Me, too.”
But…
There was always a but.
We both knew what it was. Tara hadn’t forgiven him yet. She hadn’t accepted that we were more than a clandestine affair; more than a repeat of her harrowing past experience.
Something that never should have been.
And until that day came, we would never have a chance to be.
As the sun fully set behind the horizon, we’d somehow drifted toward a little gazebo away from the crowded beach. He took my hand in his and ushered me inside the wooden, screened-in pavilion that was shrouded in dusk, noise from the crowds sounding miles away.
The moment we were tucked inside, he kissed me.
I wasn’t expecting it.